Peterson to offer 'frog out of well' view

Mark Peterson, a long-time Korean studies professor / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Korean studies scholar to found foundation dedicated to history, Confucianism

By Kim Ji-soo

Mark Peterson, 71, a "Koreanist," has enjoyed a charmed life, according to his and his late mother's account.

"That's what my mother used to say, because I travel between Korea and the United States so often," said Peterson, associate professor of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah. His mother said traveling between her hometown of Snowflake, Arizona and Salt Lake City itself was a challenge far enough for her.

Peterson has lived in Korea for 15 years and still travels between Korea and the United States frequently. He first arrived in Korea in 1965 as a missionary of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and returned later, staying in the country from 1978 to 1983 as head of the Fulbright Scholarship Foundation in Seoul. During that time, he wrote an article on the 1980 Gwangju Pro-Democracy Uprising titled "American Officials and the Kwangju Uprising." He earned his master's and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he technically focused on Korean studies under East Asian Languages and Civilizations. In 1996, he received the Yeonam Award for his paper, "Creation of a Confucian Society — Change in Adoption and Inheritance in Mid-Joseon Dynasty."

"I am a Koreanist, because I don't think it's humble to call myself a Korea scholar," he said in an interview held with The Korea Times in Seoul.

When he retires in July, Peterson will establish a research foundation called Jeong Woe Wa, based on a Korean expression that means "a frog that got out of the well." The institute is to help Koreans get a global view of their proud 5,000-year history.

"About the time I turned 60, I felt that I should teach Korean history the way I read it," Peterson said. Peterson disagrees with the narrow-minded ‘frog-in-the-well' mainstream view on the Korean history, including that Korea was a country that had suffered from multiple invasions.

"The Korean view is that Korea has suffered from many, many invasions. And I argue against that. This may be a victimization history. My argument is that Korea has not suffered from so many invasions, with only two major ones being the Imjin War (1592-98) and the invasion by the Mongols," he said, with the latter invasion referring to the series of campaigns by the Mongol Empire against the Goryeo Kingdom between 1231 and 1270. He knows his view is still a minority view among Koreans.

"From the 20th century perspective, Korea is a victimized country but from the satellite view of Korea's 5,000-year history, Korea was a stable country," he said.

Why should Koreans be proud of their history? Each of the two kingdoms, Goryeo and Joseon, lasted around 500 years and Silla lasted 992 years —unprecedented in the world. "Generally, dynasties and kingdoms of the other countries lasted 200-350 years," he said. "In addition, succession from Shilla to Goryeo and to Joseon was smooth," unlike other countries where dynastic change was preceded by decades of bloody civil war."

"I will have three goals with Jeong Woe Wa. First, I want to change Korean history education," Peterson said. "I think we need to get back to real Korean culture, to get away from the distortions of the Korean history of the 20th century." By distortions, he means Korea's interpretation of its own history as a land that was invaded multiple times, a perspective he believes is a Japanese colonial point of view that justifies their occupation.

His second goal is to highlight the impact of Confucianism on the Korean society. He said Confucianism took concrete shape in the late 17th century.

"You can see there was a change in the system of inheritance, in which daughters could no longer inherit. Once they marry, they get a dowry, but they don't get an inheritance," he said.

Peterson said other changes came along because of the disinheritance for daughters, the preference for sons. The next changes were in the adoption of sons, the "jokbo" or family records and the "jesa" or ancestral rituals. Then marriage practices changed, with women considered as entering the in-law's house more often than men coming to live in the wife's family. "Practices in marriage also changed; for instance, the married couple more often lived with the groom's family than with the bride's." The last change was the beginning of a lineal village. In sum, a patrilineal society began to form in the late 17th century.

Peterson's third goal is to promote the Korean poetic form of "sijo."

"Sijo expresses creative mind of Koreans,"he said. "Sadly, American schools teach students 'haiku,' the Japanese poetic form but not sijo," he said.

"Like Koreans, my stomach hurts when a cousin buys land," in an apparent reference to the popularity of haiku and ignorance of sijo among American students.

Peterson has chosen these three goals for his foundation because he has seen positive responses to them when he taught Korean history from his perspective and wants to bring that positive angle to Korea.

He acknowledges Confucianism's negative aspects, such as authoritarianism and disregard for women.

"But those are not essential parts of Confucianism. And I think there is much good inside of Confucianism," he said. "As I would like to say, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," he said, stressing the philosophy's good aspects. His favorite Confucian book is "Mencius," and his favorite Korean Confucian scholar is Yulgok Yi I.

His decades of living in Korea have inevitably made him politically engaged as shown in his article on Gwangju. In the article he wrote that the incident was planned by the new junta, that led by Major General Chun Doo-hwan, and that the U.S. was caught off-guard and pulled into the event. In that article he interviewed then ambassador William Gleysteen and USFK Commander John Wickham and put them on the record concerning the events of Gwangju.

Peterson's life in Korea has entered another chapter. His two daughters, whom he adopted in Korea, have married and moved out, and thus he has been renting out his basement apartment to a family of North Korean defectors in their 20s.

"My wife and I had an argument initially as my wife wanted to rent it out and use the income for our travels. But we decided to rent to the defector couple," he said.

The husband first escaped North Korea and settled in the South, but he could not forget his love. So he worked to earn money to bring his love back, now his wife. The two are from an area near Pyongyang.

"They just gave birth to a child, whom I call my third grandchild," he said, laughing.

Jung Da-min contributed to the article.